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Interview with R. James (Jim) McNulty, Jr.
In his office at 400 Second Ave. So., Suite 650, Minneapolis
Interviewed by Jeff Norman
Date of interview: February 3, 2012
Jim McNulty: JM
Jeff Norman: JN
JN: This is Jeff Norman interviewing Jim McNulty in his office, downtown Minneapolis on February 3rd, 2012. Jim, as I mention again I’m going to start with some personal background questions. First of all, when were you born and where?
JM: I was born in 1948 on November 26th in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
JN: Where in Minneapolis?
JM: I believe my parents were living on 15th Street downtown in an apartment. I was born at Abbott Hospital; I think it was Abbott hospital.
JN: And where did you grow up?
JM: I grew up initially on Georgia Avenue and 27th Street, roughly. Initially my parents lived there when I was born shortly after they moved from 15th Street, and then shortly after that they moved to 8113 Westward Hills Drive, when I was probably three or four. And then they moved about a block away when I was about seven to 8219 Westward Hills Curve, and that’s where they lived from there on.
JN: And that’s where you lived until you graduated from high school?
JM: Yes.
JN: What schools did you attend growing up?
JM: I attended, initially, Elliot Grade School, from Kindergarten through third grade. Then they had opened Cedar Manor School, so I attended Cedar Manor from fourth grade to fifth grade. Then they had opened Good Shepherd Catholic School in Golden Valley, so I went there from sixth, seventh, and eighth grade. I think prior to that time there maybe wasn’t a convenient Catholic School option, but when it did open my parents were members of the parish and a number of other people sent their kids to the new school and so forth. Then in ninth grade I went to St. John’s Preparatory School in Collegeville for one year. And then in tenth, eleventh, and twelfth grade I went to St. Louis Park High School. I went to college at St. Thomas, and I went to law school at Drake University in Des Moines.
JN: Was where you were living part of the parish that included part of Golden Valley where the church had been built?
JM: Yes.
JN: I’m jumping here ahead a little bit, but that church was built because there were more Catholic families moving into the area, the western suburbs, was that what was going on?
JM: That’s usually what happens. I think at that time, that population was starting to build up in Golden Valley and St. Louis Park, and I know when I was baptized for example, it was just a small little Quonset hut type church, which was over by where the West End is now in St. Louis Park. Where the Cooper Theater used to be there was a little church there; that was their first church. Then as the population grew—my father was actually on the committee to raise funds to build the church and schools, as I recall—so they built that because of the population increase, for sure.
JN: When you transferred there was that the first year that the school was operating?
JM: Yes.
JN: Interesting. Do you have siblings?
JM: I have four siblings.
JN: Where are you in that order?
JM: I’m the oldest of five kids.
JN: Where were your parents born?
JM: They were both born in Minneapolis. They grew up near each other and didn’t know each other until after the war when my mother and father met at the University of Minnesota.
JN: What was your mom’s maiden name?
JM: Linsmayer.
JN: That’s the German side.
JM: That’s the German side, yes. Her father was in the fur business—downtown Minneapolis; that’s where his offices were—and he bought and sold a lot of furs, and dealt with the New York people. Actually he and his father could speak Yiddish, because of all the interactions and dealings they had to have. And their background, of course, was from Germany—they spoke German—so it was interesting to hear that piece of family history along the way.
JN: What year did your father die?
JM: 1996.
JN: And did you marry?
JM: Yes.
JN: Any children?
JM: One child, named Dylan, who is ten.
JN: What is your wife’s name?
JM: Her name is Janice.
JN: And where do you live now?
JM: We live in Waconia.
JN: Which is where?
JM: It’s west of Minneapolis, about thirty miles. It’s south of Excelsior and west of Excelsior—west of Chaska. Maybe ten miles west of Chaska.
JN: I was in Excelsior yesterday. How far west of Excelsior?
JM: It’s probably ten miles west and four miles south. So probably ten, fifteen miles.
JN: And when did you move there?
JM: I moved there in 1994.
JN: Ok. Thank you for that background. Now let’s talk about your family’s involvement with development in St. Louis Park. You’ve done this genealogy research. I’ll start with the McNulty side. When did they first move to the Twin Cities?
JM: My great-great grandfather came from Ireland, and he settled in Hannibal, Missouri. He was a baker. He had nine children, and they served baking goods to the trains that came through there and to the boats and ships that came down the river. At that time it was kind of frontier, I think. It was during the Civil War, and the Cumberland Gap had opened, and all these settlers came through. They stopped on their way and set up in Hannibal, Missouri.
Then my great grandfather moved to Kansas City and St. Louis, back and forth. Then he settled in Kansas City. He came to Minneapolis in 1909 and formed Hyland Homes, and became one of the developers of St. Louis Park. He moved around the country; he did a lot of development work in Los Angeles and a lot in the Twin Cities. He developed and acquired rights to a patent for a grain door. It was a special door you put on railroad cars—grain cars—that allowed them to be emptied, and allowed you to re-use this grain door. In the past all they did was, each time they emptied the grain doors, they made things out of 2x4s, and whatever they had and threw them away afterwards. This was kind of a reusable product he had patented. At that time it was quite successful for him. Out of that he had money to by land with shortly after the Depression, or during the Depression, or before—I’m not sure exactly; but he came to Minnesota and bought a lot of land; bought a lot of land in Los Angeles. He formed the predecessor of McNulty Construction Company in 1909. It was called Hyland Homes. He came here and, like I said earlier, bought a lot of land and developed it, and built homes—that kind of thing.
JN: We know that he bought land in what became St. Louis Park. Did he buy land elsewhere in the Minneapolis area?
JM: Yes.
JN: For instance, where?
JM: Richfield, Minneapolis areas. I suppose on the western side of Minneapolis and western suburbs.
JN: And from that time was he also building homes?
JM: Yes. But I think more of his work was on the development side. But then they also had a homes company, and they built a lot of homes too, so they did both.
JN: This is your great grandfather.
JM: Yes.
JN: Briefly describe the different generation’s involvement, and how company names changed and what they did maybe changed as well, from your great grandfather to you.
JM: As I mentioned, by great grandfather started Hyland Homes, and they did the homes and development. For example, all of Virginia Circle in St. Louis Park; and all of the land across Cedar Lake Road from that; and all the land around—my great grandfather sold Minneapolis Golf Course the land that it has to build their golf course
on in the ‘20s; and all the land all around Minneapolis Golf Course on both sides he owned. At one time one of my relatives said he owned all the land west of Highway 100, and between Highway 394 and Highway 7, for the most part. I’ve never documented how much of that [laughs] really he owned, but I’m sure it was a lot. So he did that up until—In the ‘20s and the ‘30s, they were active with that business. In the ‘40s my father’s father died. He and his brother, Gerald—his name was John McNulty and his brother’s name was Gerald, and they were sons of my great grandfather J. A. McNulty, James A. McNulty. His two sons Gerald and James operated the land development business with their father. Gerald headed up the California—the Los Angeles—side of the business, and John and his father worked here in Minneapolis.
JN: So I’m already confused. Is this your grandfather’s . . . ?
JM: My grandfather and his brother. My grandfather died in ‘41—or 1940—at a young age. I think he was in his forties. My great grandfather continued living until the ‘50s. So my great grandfather continued to operate the company, and after my grandfather’s death here, with his other son in California, most of the time. I have lots of documents and correspondence. They wrote ton of letters in those days without email, and telephones being harder than they are, there’s just tons and tons of letters that I have—it’s just really fun to read them—of all their business dealings, going back and forth. The story I had heard was my great grandfather had his own railroad car that he would hook onto the trains and head back to Los Angeles—back and forth. That was his main mode of transportation. He had lots of time to write letters, and he wrote a lot of them to his two sons.
So, anyway, after the World War II period—my father was a navy pilot, and he was gone in the war when his father, John, died, in 1940 or ’41. He came back after the war. And he and his brother—another John, my uncle—they, after starting a few other career paths, ended up joining the family business, so to speak, with their grandfather, James A. McNulty, and they worked with some of the properties here. One of the properties that James A. had developed was the Westwood Hills Golf Course, which was a twenty-seven-hole golf course in St. Louis Park, on both sides of Texas Avenue going north from Cedar Lake Road. There was nine holes on the east side and eighteen holes on the west side. A lot of those golf holes extended at that time into streets now that are like Sumter, and Rhode Island, and Texas; and Westwood Hills Drive, Western Hills Curve, W. 18th Street, Westmoreland, and Franklin—all the streets in there were all golf course. After the war, my father and my uncle managed the golf course. They were the starters and the guys who did the golf course work. The golf course was owned by the family above them—my great grandfather.
In the early ‘50s there was a fire. First of all, my parents had a house that they had built near the golf course, on Westwood Hills Drive, so we moved there when I was quite
young, maybe four years old. So we were close to the golf course where they worked. One night my mother woke me up, and I remember looking out the window at a huge fire up on the hill. The golf club [clubhouse] was burning down. It’s funny because I don’t have too many memories from that young; but I do remember getting up in the middle of the night and looking out the window. They continued to operate the golf course, but at that time the development pressures were coming, and they had the land. The golf course probably wasn’t the most profitable use for the land, so, given the vehicle with Hyland Homes, they began to find ways to sub-divide the land and start building homes for the growing need and desire from all the returning people from World War II. And so they did that in conjunction with their grandfather.
On their grandfather’s death—the family was from Kansas City; my great grandfather had three other children—so they all divided up his estate. My grandmother and my father’s family ended up with the golf course here, and whatever. At that point—they had a mortgage, actually, on the golf course that they had to pay to the family in Kansas City, but as they sold lots, they paid off the mortgage and developed it—about nine holes at a time. So they initially developed—the first nine holes were over on the east side of Texas Avenue, south of Westwood Junior High School. They then developed the next nine holes, which was kind of up on top of the hill—West 18th Street—up in there, and down below the hill, south of West Franklin. The final nine holes was kept running, and that was where Westmoreland Lane is now—that was developed, the final nine holes.
When I was young, I saw it all happening. We used to build forts out of all the scrap lumber in the sumac and all that before it got torn down. That was our playground, all the forts. As I got a little older, we would play golf on the golf courses as they were being slowly developed. Then as I was in high school and college I would work in the summers on the carpenter crews for the homes that we were building both, at that time, in Golden Valley and St. Louis Park a lot, Edina, Minneapolis.
As they started to develop the golf course, there were some name changes and shifts of assets among companies, and it ultimately ended up being the Robert J. McNulty Company that my father ended up calling it. His brother, John, went on to become a lawyer, and he worked at the Maslon Kaplan firm for many years. In fact, the firm was called Maslon, Kaplan, Edelman, Borman, Brand and McNulty for a long time. And that was his vocation, so he probably did that, and my father did the building stuff and development stuff. From Robert J. McNulty Company to McNulty Construction Company, I think that was shifted in 1956, so it’s been McNulty Construction Company since 1956.
JN: Which is what it is now?
JM: Which is what it is now.
JN: Are there any other family members involved, along with you?
JM: My brother Tim and myself have been working here for probably thirty years or more.
JN: You mentioned that there was development going on other places like Golden Valley and Edina. Also on property that was in the family? That came originally from your great grandfather?
JM: Yes, some was, and some was other developments that my father would acquire—the land. I remember we had some lots over by Oak Ridge Country Club, and we were building there. And we had lots out in Indian Hills, in Edina, and we were building in the ‘60s.
JN: Were these individual lots?
JM: They were small pieces of property that were subdivided that we owned. But they weren’t hundreds of acres like Westwood Hills was.
JN: I read on the St. Louis Park Historical Society’s website about, I think it was your father who took on a partner at some point by the name of Murray?
JM: Yes.
JN: And what was the reason for that?
JM: His name was Lyle Murray, and he had development expertise. They were developing on a grand scale at this time, and they were taking out large loans from Twin City Federal for their projects, and I think my father wanted a development partner with expertise in some of that. So they worked together, and their company was called Murray-Mac Company. That company did part of the development. Then my father had another company that built the homes. That was Hyland Homes for a while, until he changed the name. So he and Lyle worked together on the development.
JN: How long did that relationship continue?
JM: I don’t recall the exact dates, but I think it lasted through a good part of the ‘50s and mid-‘60s maybe.
JN: You mentioned that the different—now I’m talking about Westwood Hills area—the different phases for the nine holes at a time. Do you recall dates, generally, when these phases were begun or completed?
JM: I don’t have exact dates, but I would guess that the initial nine holes on the east side of Texas Avenue was started in the early ‘50s—’52, ’53, ’54—in there. I would imagine that the next nine holes, where the clubhouse was, and up on the hill and down below, was more in the later ‘50s, early ‘60s. And then the last nine holes, which was on Westmoreland Lane, was more in the early ‘60s—actually through the ‘60s—and I was involved, actually, in building homes on some of our last lots there in the ‘80s for some people. So we kind of continued until the last lot, I think, was built on in the ‘80s there.
JN: In general was there overlap? I mean a house at a time it sounds like. Or would a development, by and large, be completed before next nine holes was begun?
JM: By and large, they would try and complete most of what they had before they’d start another one, but they always had another one on the planning boards, working with the city and trying to get approvals and so forth, so they could anticipate when it would be needed. And they needed to manage the money to fund the improvements and pay off the loans from the prior developments and so forth, so they tried to not get too far ahead of themselves. Part of what they did in those developments is they ended up selling the land to St. Louis Park for Westwood Hills Junior High School—was one of the sales they made; and then they also worked out an arrangement—I think it was part donation, part sale—of the Westwood Hills Nature Park.
JN: The sale to the city for the junior high school was in the ‘50s?
JM: Yes.
JN: And the land for the park, when did that . . . ?
JM: I think that was more in the ‘60s. Because I think a lot of it was part of their final platting of the roads and so forth, and how they were going to go through that area and working out with the city what was going to be park and what was going to be development.
JN: How many homes, would you say, were built—on all three of these parts?
JM: Maybe 400, I would guess.
JN: You mentioned GIs coming back from World War II, more housing was needed; what kind of housing did your father tend to build there in that part of St. Louis Park?
JM: Initially, in the Virginia Circle area and in other areas, they built state of the art housing, which was pretty generic in those days. It was the smaller main floor master bedroom with a basement and perhaps a lofted bedroom upstairs and maybe another bedroom or two on the main floor. They were quite modest in size and scope. I remember one house that was put up for a model in thirty days. They were not huge, by any means. A lot of them had one-car garages, that kind of thing.
JN: Sounds like two story?
JM: Some.
JN: Did that change—the kind of housing—change, or maybe even the sense of what the market was, change with each phase?
JM: Yes.
JN: And how did that change?
JM: As people began to have more money to spend and were more prosperous, they built nicer homes. They built bigger homes, and they built homes with better features with them. The style of architecture and the style of construction became more expensive and more complicated and more interesting. That became more of a custom home business, which as the company moved around town and into Westmoreland Lane especially, I remember there was a lot of very different houses being built to order for customers, rather than cookie cutter types that were a lot of the spec homes they built after World War II. I think at one time they had thirty or forty spec homes sitting there. I remember a story where my father told me he had to go down to the lumber company and ask them if they would work with him for awhile because he couldn’t pay his lumber bills. They got a little stretched out ahead of themselves, and he remembered how the lumber company executive was very confident, and then shook his hand, and said “Bob I know you’ll do just fine, I’m not worried about you, just keep going.” They didn’t have anything in writing or anything like that. It was in those days where things were a little more—handshake. It all worked out fine.
JN: And he got ahead of himself because a lot of the homes he was building were on spec.
JM: Right.
JN: What lumber company was it?
JM: I think it was Federated Lumber, as I recall.
JN: Which was located where?
JM: It was located I think in St. Louis Park, but I don’t remember the names.
JN: Square footage—the initial homes, smaller homes, would have averaged about what?
JM: Maybe 1,500 square feet to 2,000, I suppose.
JN: And at the other end, when there were customer homes being built?
JM: Oh, I suppose they would get up to 5,000, 6,000.
JN: And that went through as you say into the ‘80s; there were still a few being built.
JM: Yes, in the Westwood Hills, St. Louis Park area.
JN: Would your father hire architects to design the homes later in time?
JM: Yes. We had early on in more of the production housing days when they were building lots, they had more architectural draft persons on staff who would draw the plans, or the lumber yards in those days had people that would draw plans for you a lot. They were pretty simple plans. And as things got more involved and more into custom housing, we would have more of an architect rather than a draftsman person on staff to do those plans. And sometimes we would work with an owner’s architect; if they had one they wanted to work with, we would work with that architect as well. It would vary to some degree.
JN: Tell me again: after you finish law school, you come back and start working in the family business. And when was that?
JM: I finished law school in 1974. My father had always told me, “Go to law school, find a profession. This building business is too tough.” So I took his advice. Then I went and worked as a public defender, and then as a county attorney for probably seven or eight years. Then he needed someone to run his business and asked if I would come in and give it a try. He was very busy. He had developed an expertise in hockey stadia, and he was building hockey stadia around the country and around the world. He had a variety of commercial projects he was quite busy with and didn’t have time for the residential or development or the local commercial building we were doing, so he needed someone to run that. I decided to come in and give it a try. That was probably in 1981 or so.
JN: And you liked it?
JM: Initially it was rather challenging. I mean it’s always challenging, but it was mystifying, because I didn’t learn about business in law school, or how to run a business, and I didn’t know how to run a business; and accounting was never my strong point. So there was a lot of learning on the job for me. Although I knew about construction from having worked in construction, I didn’t know about the business side of construction, and it seemed very complex and very challenging to learn at a rapid learning curve. But there was a lot to do; it was very exciting; I got to work with my father on a lot of his projects, flying to various places; that was fun. We did a lot of development work together; that was fun. It was nice to have him as a sounding board on all the issues that would come up on a variety of circumstances. So it was enjoyable to work together. Then my brother joined us too. It was a good situation.
JN: Your brother is how much younger?
JM: He is about six years younger than I am.
JN: It sounds like it was a good relationship you had with your father.
JM: Yes.
JN: Did you have any sense then or since about carrying on the family lineage, business-wise?
JM: I did when I came into work for my father, because he was too busy with other things, and he was unable to—he had said actually, “If you want to come in and run the business, you are welcome. I don’t know what I’m going to do; I may have to sell it; I’m not sure. It’s more than I’m able to deal with at the current time.” So, when I did begin, I did kind of feel like I was, not saving the family business, but keeping it going I suppose would be a good way to put it.
JN: And you took some pride, or there was some sense of responsibility.
JM: Yes.
JN: Again, focusing on St. Louis Park, the west side—you mentioned GIs, but can you say more about what kinds of families your father was hoping to attract?
JM: I don’t know that he was hoping to attract any specific kind of family. He was hoping to attract customers that could pay [laughs] for their home and their lot. That was the motivation for creating lots and building homes. I think that would probably be the best criteria: paying customers, really, all they were after.
JN: Did he do any kind of promotion?
JM: They did some advertising. They did some—I found some old ads they did in the newspaper on lots and so forth. A lot of it was in conjunction with Westwood Hills Golf Course, too. “Come live near the golf course,” that kind of thing. I think they had grander plans for the golf course lots at one point, but the way it worked out with the city didn’t quite turn out that way, and that’s often the way it happens.
JN: Do you know was there ever any of opposition from the community about this expansion in that part of the city?
JM: Yes, I recall there was a variety of opposition points at times towards some of the development ideas they had. And they worked though whatever it was, and we have what we have today.
JN: Do you know any specifics of what people were unhappy with?
JM: I know that before those car dealerships that are over on 394 now—and there are some office buildings there—there was a place called the Carriage House. It was a bowling alley and a little hotel, and they built that—that was on our land or their land—and so they had an enterprise going there. They also wanted to put up an apartment or condominium tower—a little ahead of its time—as part of that. And that received some opposition, and so that didn’t come to pass.
JN: Too high?
JM: Too high and too different of a use, close to residential people and that kind of thing. And that was part of, I think, what they were trying to do when they did Westmoreland Lane. Some of that, at that time.
JN: It’s been explained to me that after the war in the ‘50s that a lot of the men in the families worked downtown, and that there needed to be—they needed to get downtown easily. You mentioned 394 (which I grew up knowing as Highway 12); I’m sure Highway 12 existed back then in some form. Do you know to what extent the success of those development projects might have been linked to transportation infrastructure in place that allowed husbands to work downtown?
JM: It was convenient to downtown, at that time. Everybody’s “convenience” is relative, of course. At that time everybody thought it was the end of the world to go out to St. Louis Park, because it was farmland out there and it was a long way away from the center of Minneapolis. So it was perceived by some people to be a long drive. But it was, indeed, fairly close, and it took people maybe 20 minutes to come downtown in those days, and it was attractive from that standpoint to have new housing that was affordable within a short drive on Highway 12, which as you say was there, and that was the main route.
JN: Were there buses that ran to that area?
JM: Yes.
JN: Do you have any sense of how reliable the buses were?
JM: I don’t think the buses came right into the St. Louis Park areas where we were building, but they came up and down Highway 12. I think that was fairly reliable.
JN: With stops on 12?
JM: Yes.
JN: Is that still the case, do you know?
JM: Probably not, because it’s a freeway now; but they have more of a suburban transit busses that come though the freeway and pick people up at locations. Actually there are some Park and Ride locations on Highway 12, now that I think of it. There’s one on Louisiana, where there’s a parking lot on Louisiana and 394. So there are some stops, yes.
JN: A lot of Jewish families moved into this area over time. You mentioned that really what your father was concerned about was just having people move in who could pay. But what do you make of the fact that so many Jewish families moved in? Or what stories might you have heard from your father—from your parents—about that?
JM: I honestly don’t recall any stories as to why. I really don’t know that—they may have talked or had theories about why the migration was happening, but I don’t think I remember them talking about them at the dinner table or that it was ever an issue of any kind. I think they were happy to have the customers. I don’t remember any great theories were [laughs] bantered about at the time.
JN: Did your—I think for the sake of simplicity let me just call it the family business.
JM: Yes.
JN: Did your dad or people in the business work with outside realtors in actually selling homes?
JM: Yes.
JN: Were there relationships formed with realtors? Long-standing relationships?
JM: Yes, they had a company called David P. Jones Company that worked with them on marketing the lots—early on, in the ‘50s. That was headed up by a guy named Jim Cattanach. Actually my father built a house for him next to the first house they built on Westwood Hills Drive. He was a long-term family friend and did a lot of the initial marketing as a realty company.
JN: And this was independent of the family business?
JM: Yes. In later years we had our own sales staff on site—building and selling staff. In the early days I think it was more separate. But we always cooperated with realtors, who would bring clients and that kind of a thing. Other that David P. Jones I don’t know that we ever listed anything with an outside realty company. They may have done something like that, but I can’t recall what that might be.
JN: Were there other developers working around St. Louis Park during any of these same years?
JM: Yes, I think there was a developer named Adolph Fine who was doing work at that time. Orrin Thompson, of course, was starting his businesses around town. He was a contemporary.
JN: And he built in St. Louis Park?
JM: I don’t know how much he built in St. Louis Park, but I know he was more in Richfield—other areas maybe; but he was getting his start then too. It was funny, in later years we ended up building a house for Orrin Thompson and his wife [laughs] in one of our townhome communities. It was fun to get to know him. My father was a realtor also, so he was able to hire people to work in our on-site sales office when we had developments going in the area.
JN: Just looking around on the walls here, and from things that you’ve said, you’ve done a lot of development, different kinds. Since you came into it, describe some of the projects you’ve done.
JM: When I initially came into it, it was completing in the Westwood Hills development; it was one of the things I had to take on. There were a number of outstanding issues with everything from development issues to city issues to certain lots and legal descriptions and survey issues, lots left to be sold, homes still to be built—that kind of thing. A lot of it was completing the Westwood Hills developments. They were at their last stages, of course. And then my father had also started in the mid-‘60s a development called Amesbury, which is behind you on the wall there, actually. It was a 120-acre development out in the Deephaven-Shorewood area near Lake Minnetonka. He had started that first area, which is townhomes or attached doubles, and so forth. They were well received at that time. They were kind of an early beginning of that kind of product in our area. There wasn’t anything else like it.
JN: And that was what years?
JM: Early ‘70s is when they actually started first building. And that was the first phase of it there, in that picture. And where we see all the woods up above, that was land he owned also, and it was my duty to get that developed. The right half we developed into single-family lots; we developed some more townhomes in the woods up there too. Those projects were ‘80s and ‘90s kinds of projects.
JN: ‘80s and ‘90s, meaning the years?
JM: Yes. It kept us quite busy, out there doing that. We’ve developed other projects. The townhome project over on Cedar Lake Road in Minnetonka was one of our developments. We’ve got a large development in White Bear Lake right now—single-family homes. Worked on other commercial developments, other commercial projects. Just a variety of things.
JN: Commercial. You mentioned the Carriage House in St. Louis Park. Any other commercial projects that you did in St. Louis Park?
JM: I’m sure there were, but I’m kind of drawing a blank right now.
JN: So you’ve done a combination of commercial and residential?
JM: Yes.
JN: Have there been other sports centers?
JM: Yes.
JN: Since you’ve been involved?
JM: Yes.
JN: Have you developed an expertise in that as well?
JM: Nothing quite like my father had, that was his area.
JN: And you have projects out of state?
JM: Not right now. We have in the past, but not right now.
JN: How has the housing free-fall affected you?
JM: It’s really quieted our business down to very little activity right now. We haven’t been building many homes. We do a remodeling business, too; we’ve always had a remodeling business. That’s been steady, but it’s not been what it usually is. So we’ve been really reducing our staff, reducing our overhead, and reducing everything while we wait out this recession. So it’s affected our volume of work, for sure.
JN: Let me ask you a few questions about more general development in St. Louis Park, and again this is maybe not from your direct experience, but any light you can shed on this would be helpful. Going back to the ‘40s and ‘50s, were there other parts of St. Louis Park being developed that your family wasn’t involved with?
JM: Was involved with?
JN: Was not—actually either way.
JM: I don’t know the answer to that. In my experience, I was pretty much focused on the Westwood Hills and surrounding areas: Virginia Circle, Minneapolis Golf Club area, areas both north and south of Cedar Lake Road were, in my experience, what the reaches of the development had been. I know there were other developers and sometimes my father would sell groups of lots to other builders, too. We wouldn’t build all the homes necessarily. He’d maybe sell four, five, ten lots to a builder, too. So there were other builders that would come in and help build out the subdivisions.
JN: The same divisions that we’ve been talking about?
JM: Yes.
JN: The city of St. Louis Park incorporated in 1955. Do you have any sense of the relationship between that and the kind of burst in activity of development?
JM: I don’t know. I just would be guessing, because I don’t know for sure. I know that, at that time, my father had seriously thought of seceding from St. Louis Park and creating his own city of Westwood Hills. I don’t know how far along they got with that, but I know it was a serious consideration at the time. I’m sure that the city of St. Louis Park, being more formal and more aggressive, was helping with things like sewer and water, and those kinds of things that you need for developments; so I’m sure that spurred on some more development for the parts of the city that were undeveloped, yes.
JN: Why was your father considering seceding?
JM: I don’t know the answer to that. I can only guess that it might have been to avoid some of the controls and fees and other things he might have viewed as burdensome that the city of St. Louis Park would be imposing on people in that position that were developing land.
JN: So the point at which you come into it, what was it like for you to work with the city?
JM: My father had really completed all the St. Louis Park city stuff by the time I came along, for the most part. The battlegrounds had all been long ago left in the dust, and everything had been resolved. But I recall there were some contentious issues, that he spent many nights with his lawyer—who was one of my uncles—before the city council and trying to work things out. So it was not always easy. I remember that much
JN: Do you remember whether there were—again this may be even in your own time, once you got involved in the business—were there city council members who really wanted this project to keep going forward? Individuals who you felt you had the backing of? Or maybe your father felt he had the backing of as opposed to maybe others on the city council?
JM: That’s beyond my experience, really. I don’t know what his relationship was. I only can conjecture that he had some that were more sympathetic and others that might have been antagonistic. That would be fairly normal.
JN: I think if we look at the population figures today, St. Louis Park, which is about 45,000—that a lot more people moved into St. Louis Park than in Golden Valley or in Hopkins. I actually don’t know how the land areas compare; but my sense is—and we’ll look at that—but my sense is that St. Louis Park, as a city, welcomed residential development perhaps more than other close-in suburbs. Do you have any thoughts about that; about what the differences were among these suburbs that led to certain of them, like St. Louis Park, being more welcoming to development than others?
JM: I really don’t have a feeling for that. I know that Hopkins and Golden Valley were smaller geographically than St. Louis Park. I know that we did a little building in both Hopkins and St. Louis Park over the years, and in those years in particular. I don’t have a feeling for that.
JN: You personally were involved in projects in Hopkins?
JM: And Golden Valley, yes.
JN: And in Golden Valley. What years?
JM: Those would have been in my high school years, [laughs] actually, working on the job as a carpenter.
JN: So these are the ‘60s?
JM: Early ‘60s, mid-‘60s.
JN: Give an example of where in Golden Valley you worked.
JM: I remember homes on Lilac Drive North—Glenwood and Highway 100 area. I remember in tenth grade, one of my first jobs, I got dropped off at a house on Ardmore Lane, north of Glenwood, and it was a house being built for Doctor Zellickson and his wife. On a nice pond. The job superintendent was this big Swede, who was about six foot seven. He gave me a shovel and a wheelbarrow and told me to fill in the side of the house. It needed fill. They didn’t have Bobcats in those days, so my job was to fill up the wheelbarrow, eight hours a day, and take it over and dump it into the side of the house. That was my job for the first week. My mother told me when I came home from work, I barely got a bite of dinner in my mouth and I was sound asleep. I think that was my initiation as the boss’s kid, or something. At least I remember that house very well. So a lot of houses along the Glenwood Avenue corridor in Golden Valley. And then in Tyrol Hills, I think; South and North Tyrol—those areas. And then we built homes near Oak Ridge. Some of them I worked on streets over by Oak Ridge.
JN: And is that Hopkins?
JM: Yes. Some of those were lots that we had, and some of them were lots where people bought and had us build the house for them—that kind of thing.
JN: I’m jumping back a little bit. Once you came into the business, and were in the business a while, was a lot of what you did building individual homes?
JM: Yes.
JN: I’m just again looking at some of the photos on the wall; and that’s what it looks like.
JM: A lot of individual homes, a lot of remodeling, a lot of focus on land development for the projects that we had ongoing. And then some commercial activities as well. But our expertise in home building had kind of changed from, over the years, to be more of a high quality custom homebuilder. And I think a lot of the work we did in St. Louis Park over the years, the later years, helped gain that reputation for us as good quality custom builders. I know we built for a lot of the Jewish community there that had nice homes. I know from going to high school in St. Louis Park and hearing from my friends’ parents and my friends would say to me was that our reputation had been well built and well advertised by that community who were happy with the homes and happy with the results, so I think our reputation was enhanced by that.
JN: You actually had friends in high school who were living in homes in St. Louis Park that your family had built?
JM: Yes.
JN: Jewish friends and non-Jewish friends?
JM: Yes.
JN: So over time, maybe more our generation, marrying and having families, perhaps moving further out, is my sense of how things have kind of evolved . . .
JM: Yes.
JN: . . . as suburbs further out have developed. Do you have any sense of Jewish families migrating out further west?
JM: Yes.
JN: Describe that a little bit. What’s you sense of it?
JM: Well, from my observation point—when I grew up, I knew a lot of kids that lived over in the Fern Hill area; a lot of my friends lived over there, and they were Jewish families that had moved from North Minneapolis over to there, over by the west side of Cedar Lake and all around in there. And lot of them had been there for a while. Some over on . . . Minikahda Vista neighborhood. It seemed like a lot of neighborhoods where I had Jewish friends. A lot of them and their families would move to St. Louis Park—it seems like there was a double move: from North Minneapolis to there, and then some would come to St. Louis Park. Some would come direct from North Minneapolis. So I got to know a lot of them. It would seem like—I think I’m getting back to your question—that the next move would be to Minnetonka; a lot them moved to Minnetonka—the next generation—or even the same generation would move to Minnetonka. We’ve built homes for Jewish families who settled in St. Louis Park, like near the old Park Theater. They’d lived there for a long time, and they’ve grown up and all their kids are grown up. I mean, they’re probably my age or a little older. And they’ve wanted to build new homes, so we’ve built new homes for them out in the Minnetonka and Deephaven areas. They’ve kind of stayed put and skipped the St. Louis Park transfer; they had their house and stayed there. They missed out on that, or for whatever reason, didn’t build a new house until later.
JN: When you say stayed put and missed the St. Louis Park, you mean the Westwood Hills area?
JM: Yeah. A lot of the children of people that we’ve built for earlier in the ‘60s and ‘50s, we’ve actually done projects for them in the Minnetonka, Plymouth, Wayzata, western suburbs. It just kind of moved another notch out. I personally noticed that a lot of them would want to live near their friends that they grew up with, or may be building. There seemed to be some attachment or cohesiveness. Occasionally there would be some—I call them oddballs, because they would move way out somewhere; there was no one else, no other Jewish person nearby. In fact, it’s kind of a funny story. A friend of mine from high school named Stevie Wiesman died. He was a real character. He said to me one day—I ran into this guy. He said, “Where are you living?” I said. “Waconia.” He said, “Waconia?! There’s no Jews out there! What are you doing living in Waconia?” It kind of goes to what I was saying: that, I think, the people that kind of stayed together but not as close, they dispersed more—a little bit. At least, that was my experience.
It was nice for us to continue building homes for relatives of the Jewish families that we built for early on. We had several that we built homes for originally in Golden Valley back in the early ‘70s. One couple I am thinking of in particular; they moved into one of our townhome developments in Minnetonka in the late ‘80s early ‘90s, and then we’ve done projects for their children in the Minnetonka areas. So we’ve kind of seen the—if you want to call it a migration—we’ve seen it from that vantage point anyway, just watching the families that we’ve worked with over the years and how their children have moved around and settled.
JN: I’m assuming—tell me if I’m right—that as families, same generation or maybe the next generation, are moving further west in homes that you’ve built, that they’re also moving up the affluence ladder.
JM: Yes. I mean, generally, the houses in general, compared to what they used to be, are bigger, nicer, more expensive on average than what we were building in the ‘50s and ‘60s or ‘70s. For sure as a starting point the houses are nicer and bigger and better, and the affluence, I think, is better too. There have been a lot of successful people, and they have built nice products.
JN: Have you done any infill in St. Louis Park?
JM: Done some in West Minneapolis, but I’m trying to think if we’ve done any in St. Louis Park. I can’t think that we have, but I see it happening all the time.
JN: I noticed some when I was here last summer.
JM: Yeah, it’s happening more and more. People tearing down things and building a new house.
JN: Do you remember any other friends—Jewish friends—from high school days that maybe you have stayed in touch with?
JM: Sure.
JN: Like who for instance?
JM: Steve Polski, Market Bar-B-Que guy—he’s a good friend of mine. I talked yesterday on the phone to another good friend named Billy Liss, whose dad owned National Camera Exchange. He grew up on France Avenue across from France Field. He’s in Denver. There was kind of a gang of us: the Goodman twins—Andy and his brother Bill lived on France Avenue. We used to have poker games in their basement; that’s when I got introduced to the game of buck ‘em, or something—and so I learned how to lose money there. There were guys named Jeff Bassin and Stan Jaffe, I see them from time to time. I see a guy named Andy Steinfeldt often. He’s kind of our class president sort of guy who helps organize the reunions. There’s just a variety of friends that I actually do keep in touch with from those days and from the Jewish group, I suppose you’d call it.
One thing did come to mind when you were talking earlier, is I know back in those early days I think there were, as I recall—I don’t remember having personal experience; I remember reading about it more—was where some subdivisions and developers would have deed restrictions that wouldn’t allow sales of homes or land to people of different persuasions. Sometimes specifically they would mention Jewish people or black people or whatever. I don’t know if that had something to do with the direction of where people would go, because our developments in St. Louis Park were never—I mean my family was never that way; there were never any restrictions for anybody, so I don’t know how much restriction was elsewhere that actually, you know, limited choices. But I know it existed.
JN: I might have missed the first part of that. So how did you know it existed?
JM: I’ve read about it. I never had personal experience with it, but I know it was put into deed restrictions and things from earlier.
JN: Do you have any sense of what areas where that was done?
JM: I don’t. Like I said, I haven’t encountered any of it in my work, but I just know that it was something that existed in the not too long past. But it wasn’t part of my experience. I just know it was out there. I don’t know where.
JN: Maybe you haven’t really done any development in St. Louis Park for awhile, but do you have any impression of how St. Louis Park has developed—has continued to develop as a community through the ‘90s and the last twenty years or so?
JM: Well, my mother still has her house in St. Louis Park, so I am still a regular visitor to St. Louis Park, and I still have friends who live in St. Louis Park that, actually, went to high school with me in St. Louis Park. So I keep in touch to some degree with some of the local activities. I’ve been somewhat impressed lately with St. Louis Park from what I read and hear, that they’ve been proactive as a good city, and they’ve done some nice development things on Excelsior Boulevard, and their ice arena, and so forth. And now they are talking about a community center for the whole city—that would be nice; similar to what other cities have in the outlying suburbs, with an indoor pool and workout facilities, and all that. I’ve heard from the real estate community, too, that St. Louis Park is a desirable place to live. And the people that I talk to that we do remodeling projects for—on Westmoreland Lane for example—I talked to a woman there whose house we built there back in the ‘70s for her and her husband. We remodeled something for her last year. Her words were, “They just love St. Louis Park.” Their kids grew up in St. Louis Park, and they just, actually, love it. So I think there are a lot of positives there.
JN: Any specifics about what they loved?
JM: They liked the schools; they liked the experience their kids had; they liked the neighborhood; they liked the easy-to-get-places sort of feature about it.
[BREAK]
JN: From your own experience growing up in St. Louis Park, did you have a sense of there being parts of the city that were more affluent than others?
JM: Yes.
JN: And how did that break down—some examples.
JM: I think the Westmoreland Lane area was clearly developed into being a more affluent area in the city. I think Westwood Hills, parts of it were more affluent. I think some of the areas in the Minikahda Vista were more affluent. The Fern Hill area had some more affluent homes. Those are the ones that come to mind.
JN: And the less affluent areas?
JM: I think some of the older parts of the city, over by the railroad tracks and—what do they call it?— Skunk Hollow area. Or some of the older housing stock by Knollwood, north and south of Knollwood Shopping Center. In those areas perhaps. Some of the housing stock around Elliot Grade School.
JN: Which is where?
JM: On Cedar Lake Road and Louisiana South—east on Cedar Lake Road from Louisiana. Maybe a mile on the southern side. Older housing is kind of all around in there, working its way down towards Highway 100 and 394, probably. Both north and south of Elliot School, I think, were some of the maybe less affluent areas. But then some of the areas north and south of, I think it was Lennox School maybe, which was on Minnetonka Boulevard, east of Louisiana and Minnetonka Boulevard—some of those areas around in there.
JN: Are there any realtors, developers who go back to the ‘50s who you can think of that may still be around that would be good for us to talk with?
JM: There’s a guy named Sam Thorpe. His family had Thorpe Realty. They developed a lot of country club area in Edina. Sam’s family has been in the real estate business forever. And he’s around, still, I believe. They had a lot to do with the early days.
JN: Sam Thorpe is the one who is around now?
JM: Yes.
JN: OK. Anything else that maybe you thought of as we were talking about your involvement, your family’s involvement in development in St. Louis Park? And also maybe as it relates to Jewish families moving in?
JM: No, not really. I can’t think of anything other than I ended up with a more extensive Yiddish vocabulary than any of my other friends that I know. [Laughs] That was kind of funny, but I guess that’s what you get when you grow up next to people with different cultures and experiences.
JN: Well, that’s a good way to end this. Thank you so much.
JM: Sure.

Interview with R. James (Jim) McNulty, Jr.
In his office at 400 Second Ave. So., Suite 650, Minneapolis
Interviewed by Jeff Norman
Date of interview: February 3, 2012
Jim McNulty: JM
Jeff Norman: JN
JN: This is Jeff Norman interviewing Jim McNulty in his office, downtown Minneapolis on February 3rd, 2012. Jim, as I mention again I’m going to start with some personal background questions. First of all, when were you born and where?
JM: I was born in 1948 on November 26th in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
JN: Where in Minneapolis?
JM: I believe my parents were living on 15th Street downtown in an apartment. I was born at Abbott Hospital; I think it was Abbott hospital.
JN: And where did you grow up?
JM: I grew up initially on Georgia Avenue and 27th Street, roughly. Initially my parents lived there when I was born shortly after they moved from 15th Street, and then shortly after that they moved to 8113 Westward Hills Drive, when I was probably three or four. And then they moved about a block away when I was about seven to 8219 Westward Hills Curve, and that’s where they lived from there on.
JN: And that’s where you lived until you graduated from high school?
JM: Yes.
JN: What schools did you attend growing up?
JM: I attended, initially, Elliot Grade School, from Kindergarten through third grade. Then they had opened Cedar Manor School, so I attended Cedar Manor from fourth grade to fifth grade. Then they had opened Good Shepherd Catholic School in Golden Valley, so I went there from sixth, seventh, and eighth grade. I think prior to that time there maybe wasn’t a convenient Catholic School option, but when it did open my parents were members of the parish and a number of other people sent their kids to the new school and so forth. Then in ninth grade I went to St. John’s Preparatory School in Collegeville for one year. And then in tenth, eleventh, and twelfth grade I went to St. Louis Park High School. I went to college at St. Thomas, and I went to law school at Drake University in Des Moines.
JN: Was where you were living part of the parish that included part of Golden Valley where the church had been built?
JM: Yes.
JN: I’m jumping here ahead a little bit, but that church was built because there were more Catholic families moving into the area, the western suburbs, was that what was going on?
JM: That’s usually what happens. I think at that time, that population was starting to build up in Golden Valley and St. Louis Park, and I know when I was baptized for example, it was just a small little Quonset hut type church, which was over by where the West End is now in St. Louis Park. Where the Cooper Theater used to be there was a little church there; that was their first church. Then as the population grew—my father was actually on the committee to raise funds to build the church and schools, as I recall—so they built that because of the population increase, for sure.
JN: When you transferred there was that the first year that the school was operating?
JM: Yes.
JN: Interesting. Do you have siblings?
JM: I have four siblings.
JN: Where are you in that order?
JM: I’m the oldest of five kids.
JN: Where were your parents born?
JM: They were both born in Minneapolis. They grew up near each other and didn’t know each other until after the war when my mother and father met at the University of Minnesota.
JN: What was your mom’s maiden name?
JM: Linsmayer.
JN: That’s the German side.
JM: That’s the German side, yes. Her father was in the fur business—downtown Minneapolis; that’s where his offices were—and he bought and sold a lot of furs, and dealt with the New York people. Actually he and his father could speak Yiddish, because of all the interactions and dealings they had to have. And their background, of course, was from Germany—they spoke German—so it was interesting to hear that piece of family history along the way.
JN: What year did your father die?
JM: 1996.
JN: And did you marry?
JM: Yes.
JN: Any children?
JM: One child, named Dylan, who is ten.
JN: What is your wife’s name?
JM: Her name is Janice.
JN: And where do you live now?
JM: We live in Waconia.
JN: Which is where?
JM: It’s west of Minneapolis, about thirty miles. It’s south of Excelsior and west of Excelsior—west of Chaska. Maybe ten miles west of Chaska.
JN: I was in Excelsior yesterday. How far west of Excelsior?
JM: It’s probably ten miles west and four miles south. So probably ten, fifteen miles.
JN: And when did you move there?
JM: I moved there in 1994.
JN: Ok. Thank you for that background. Now let’s talk about your family’s involvement with development in St. Louis Park. You’ve done this genealogy research. I’ll start with the McNulty side. When did they first move to the Twin Cities?
JM: My great-great grandfather came from Ireland, and he settled in Hannibal, Missouri. He was a baker. He had nine children, and they served baking goods to the trains that came through there and to the boats and ships that came down the river. At that time it was kind of frontier, I think. It was during the Civil War, and the Cumberland Gap had opened, and all these settlers came through. They stopped on their way and set up in Hannibal, Missouri.
Then my great grandfather moved to Kansas City and St. Louis, back and forth. Then he settled in Kansas City. He came to Minneapolis in 1909 and formed Hyland Homes, and became one of the developers of St. Louis Park. He moved around the country; he did a lot of development work in Los Angeles and a lot in the Twin Cities. He developed and acquired rights to a patent for a grain door. It was a special door you put on railroad cars—grain cars—that allowed them to be emptied, and allowed you to re-use this grain door. In the past all they did was, each time they emptied the grain doors, they made things out of 2x4s, and whatever they had and threw them away afterwards. This was kind of a reusable product he had patented. At that time it was quite successful for him. Out of that he had money to by land with shortly after the Depression, or during the Depression, or before—I’m not sure exactly; but he came to Minnesota and bought a lot of land; bought a lot of land in Los Angeles. He formed the predecessor of McNulty Construction Company in 1909. It was called Hyland Homes. He came here and, like I said earlier, bought a lot of land and developed it, and built homes—that kind of thing.
JN: We know that he bought land in what became St. Louis Park. Did he buy land elsewhere in the Minneapolis area?
JM: Yes.
JN: For instance, where?
JM: Richfield, Minneapolis areas. I suppose on the western side of Minneapolis and western suburbs.
JN: And from that time was he also building homes?
JM: Yes. But I think more of his work was on the development side. But then they also had a homes company, and they built a lot of homes too, so they did both.
JN: This is your great grandfather.
JM: Yes.
JN: Briefly describe the different generation’s involvement, and how company names changed and what they did maybe changed as well, from your great grandfather to you.
JM: As I mentioned, by great grandfather started Hyland Homes, and they did the homes and development. For example, all of Virginia Circle in St. Louis Park; and all of the land across Cedar Lake Road from that; and all the land around—my great grandfather sold Minneapolis Golf Course the land that it has to build their golf course
on in the ‘20s; and all the land all around Minneapolis Golf Course on both sides he owned. At one time one of my relatives said he owned all the land west of Highway 100, and between Highway 394 and Highway 7, for the most part. I’ve never documented how much of that [laughs] really he owned, but I’m sure it was a lot. So he did that up until—In the ‘20s and the ‘30s, they were active with that business. In the ‘40s my father’s father died. He and his brother, Gerald—his name was John McNulty and his brother’s name was Gerald, and they were sons of my great grandfather J. A. McNulty, James A. McNulty. His two sons Gerald and James operated the land development business with their father. Gerald headed up the California—the Los Angeles—side of the business, and John and his father worked here in Minneapolis.
JN: So I’m already confused. Is this your grandfather’s . . . ?
JM: My grandfather and his brother. My grandfather died in ‘41—or 1940—at a young age. I think he was in his forties. My great grandfather continued living until the ‘50s. So my great grandfather continued to operate the company, and after my grandfather’s death here, with his other son in California, most of the time. I have lots of documents and correspondence. They wrote ton of letters in those days without email, and telephones being harder than they are, there’s just tons and tons of letters that I have—it’s just really fun to read them—of all their business dealings, going back and forth. The story I had heard was my great grandfather had his own railroad car that he would hook onto the trains and head back to Los Angeles—back and forth. That was his main mode of transportation. He had lots of time to write letters, and he wrote a lot of them to his two sons.
So, anyway, after the World War II period—my father was a navy pilot, and he was gone in the war when his father, John, died, in 1940 or ’41. He came back after the war. And he and his brother—another John, my uncle—they, after starting a few other career paths, ended up joining the family business, so to speak, with their grandfather, James A. McNulty, and they worked with some of the properties here. One of the properties that James A. had developed was the Westwood Hills Golf Course, which was a twenty-seven-hole golf course in St. Louis Park, on both sides of Texas Avenue going north from Cedar Lake Road. There was nine holes on the east side and eighteen holes on the west side. A lot of those golf holes extended at that time into streets now that are like Sumter, and Rhode Island, and Texas; and Westwood Hills Drive, Western Hills Curve, W. 18th Street, Westmoreland, and Franklin—all the streets in there were all golf course. After the war, my father and my uncle managed the golf course. They were the starters and the guys who did the golf course work. The golf course was owned by the family above them—my great grandfather.
In the early ‘50s there was a fire. First of all, my parents had a house that they had built near the golf course, on Westwood Hills Drive, so we moved there when I was quite
young, maybe four years old. So we were close to the golf course where they worked. One night my mother woke me up, and I remember looking out the window at a huge fire up on the hill. The golf club [clubhouse] was burning down. It’s funny because I don’t have too many memories from that young; but I do remember getting up in the middle of the night and looking out the window. They continued to operate the golf course, but at that time the development pressures were coming, and they had the land. The golf course probably wasn’t the most profitable use for the land, so, given the vehicle with Hyland Homes, they began to find ways to sub-divide the land and start building homes for the growing need and desire from all the returning people from World War II. And so they did that in conjunction with their grandfather.
On their grandfather’s death—the family was from Kansas City; my great grandfather had three other children—so they all divided up his estate. My grandmother and my father’s family ended up with the golf course here, and whatever. At that point—they had a mortgage, actually, on the golf course that they had to pay to the family in Kansas City, but as they sold lots, they paid off the mortgage and developed it—about nine holes at a time. So they initially developed—the first nine holes were over on the east side of Texas Avenue, south of Westwood Junior High School. They then developed the next nine holes, which was kind of up on top of the hill—West 18th Street—up in there, and down below the hill, south of West Franklin. The final nine holes was kept running, and that was where Westmoreland Lane is now—that was developed, the final nine holes.
When I was young, I saw it all happening. We used to build forts out of all the scrap lumber in the sumac and all that before it got torn down. That was our playground, all the forts. As I got a little older, we would play golf on the golf courses as they were being slowly developed. Then as I was in high school and college I would work in the summers on the carpenter crews for the homes that we were building both, at that time, in Golden Valley and St. Louis Park a lot, Edina, Minneapolis.
As they started to develop the golf course, there were some name changes and shifts of assets among companies, and it ultimately ended up being the Robert J. McNulty Company that my father ended up calling it. His brother, John, went on to become a lawyer, and he worked at the Maslon Kaplan firm for many years. In fact, the firm was called Maslon, Kaplan, Edelman, Borman, Brand and McNulty for a long time. And that was his vocation, so he probably did that, and my father did the building stuff and development stuff. From Robert J. McNulty Company to McNulty Construction Company, I think that was shifted in 1956, so it’s been McNulty Construction Company since 1956.
JN: Which is what it is now?
JM: Which is what it is now.
JN: Are there any other family members involved, along with you?
JM: My brother Tim and myself have been working here for probably thirty years or more.
JN: You mentioned that there was development going on other places like Golden Valley and Edina. Also on property that was in the family? That came originally from your great grandfather?
JM: Yes, some was, and some was other developments that my father would acquire—the land. I remember we had some lots over by Oak Ridge Country Club, and we were building there. And we had lots out in Indian Hills, in Edina, and we were building in the ‘60s.
JN: Were these individual lots?
JM: They were small pieces of property that were subdivided that we owned. But they weren’t hundreds of acres like Westwood Hills was.
JN: I read on the St. Louis Park Historical Society’s website about, I think it was your father who took on a partner at some point by the name of Murray?
JM: Yes.
JN: And what was the reason for that?
JM: His name was Lyle Murray, and he had development expertise. They were developing on a grand scale at this time, and they were taking out large loans from Twin City Federal for their projects, and I think my father wanted a development partner with expertise in some of that. So they worked together, and their company was called Murray-Mac Company. That company did part of the development. Then my father had another company that built the homes. That was Hyland Homes for a while, until he changed the name. So he and Lyle worked together on the development.
JN: How long did that relationship continue?
JM: I don’t recall the exact dates, but I think it lasted through a good part of the ‘50s and mid-‘60s maybe.
JN: You mentioned that the different—now I’m talking about Westwood Hills area—the different phases for the nine holes at a time. Do you recall dates, generally, when these phases were begun or completed?
JM: I don’t have exact dates, but I would guess that the initial nine holes on the east side of Texas Avenue was started in the early ‘50s—’52, ’53, ’54—in there. I would imagine that the next nine holes, where the clubhouse was, and up on the hill and down below, was more in the later ‘50s, early ‘60s. And then the last nine holes, which was on Westmoreland Lane, was more in the early ‘60s—actually through the ‘60s—and I was involved, actually, in building homes on some of our last lots there in the ‘80s for some people. So we kind of continued until the last lot, I think, was built on in the ‘80s there.
JN: In general was there overlap? I mean a house at a time it sounds like. Or would a development, by and large, be completed before next nine holes was begun?
JM: By and large, they would try and complete most of what they had before they’d start another one, but they always had another one on the planning boards, working with the city and trying to get approvals and so forth, so they could anticipate when it would be needed. And they needed to manage the money to fund the improvements and pay off the loans from the prior developments and so forth, so they tried to not get too far ahead of themselves. Part of what they did in those developments is they ended up selling the land to St. Louis Park for Westwood Hills Junior High School—was one of the sales they made; and then they also worked out an arrangement—I think it was part donation, part sale—of the Westwood Hills Nature Park.
JN: The sale to the city for the junior high school was in the ‘50s?
JM: Yes.
JN: And the land for the park, when did that . . . ?
JM: I think that was more in the ‘60s. Because I think a lot of it was part of their final platting of the roads and so forth, and how they were going to go through that area and working out with the city what was going to be park and what was going to be development.
JN: How many homes, would you say, were built—on all three of these parts?
JM: Maybe 400, I would guess.
JN: You mentioned GIs coming back from World War II, more housing was needed; what kind of housing did your father tend to build there in that part of St. Louis Park?
JM: Initially, in the Virginia Circle area and in other areas, they built state of the art housing, which was pretty generic in those days. It was the smaller main floor master bedroom with a basement and perhaps a lofted bedroom upstairs and maybe another bedroom or two on the main floor. They were quite modest in size and scope. I remember one house that was put up for a model in thirty days. They were not huge, by any means. A lot of them had one-car garages, that kind of thing.
JN: Sounds like two story?
JM: Some.
JN: Did that change—the kind of housing—change, or maybe even the sense of what the market was, change with each phase?
JM: Yes.
JN: And how did that change?
JM: As people began to have more money to spend and were more prosperous, they built nicer homes. They built bigger homes, and they built homes with better features with them. The style of architecture and the style of construction became more expensive and more complicated and more interesting. That became more of a custom home business, which as the company moved around town and into Westmoreland Lane especially, I remember there was a lot of very different houses being built to order for customers, rather than cookie cutter types that were a lot of the spec homes they built after World War II. I think at one time they had thirty or forty spec homes sitting there. I remember a story where my father told me he had to go down to the lumber company and ask them if they would work with him for awhile because he couldn’t pay his lumber bills. They got a little stretched out ahead of themselves, and he remembered how the lumber company executive was very confident, and then shook his hand, and said “Bob I know you’ll do just fine, I’m not worried about you, just keep going.” They didn’t have anything in writing or anything like that. It was in those days where things were a little more—handshake. It all worked out fine.
JN: And he got ahead of himself because a lot of the homes he was building were on spec.
JM: Right.
JN: What lumber company was it?
JM: I think it was Federated Lumber, as I recall.
JN: Which was located where?
JM: It was located I think in St. Louis Park, but I don’t remember the names.
JN: Square footage—the initial homes, smaller homes, would have averaged about what?
JM: Maybe 1,500 square feet to 2,000, I suppose.
JN: And at the other end, when there were customer homes being built?
JM: Oh, I suppose they would get up to 5,000, 6,000.
JN: And that went through as you say into the ‘80s; there were still a few being built.
JM: Yes, in the Westwood Hills, St. Louis Park area.
JN: Would your father hire architects to design the homes later in time?
JM: Yes. We had early on in more of the production housing days when they were building lots, they had more architectural draft persons on staff who would draw the plans, or the lumber yards in those days had people that would draw plans for you a lot. They were pretty simple plans. And as things got more involved and more into custom housing, we would have more of an architect rather than a draftsman person on staff to do those plans. And sometimes we would work with an owner’s architect; if they had one they wanted to work with, we would work with that architect as well. It would vary to some degree.
JN: Tell me again: after you finish law school, you come back and start working in the family business. And when was that?
JM: I finished law school in 1974. My father had always told me, “Go to law school, find a profession. This building business is too tough.” So I took his advice. Then I went and worked as a public defender, and then as a county attorney for probably seven or eight years. Then he needed someone to run his business and asked if I would come in and give it a try. He was very busy. He had developed an expertise in hockey stadia, and he was building hockey stadia around the country and around the world. He had a variety of commercial projects he was quite busy with and didn’t have time for the residential or development or the local commercial building we were doing, so he needed someone to run that. I decided to come in and give it a try. That was probably in 1981 or so.
JN: And you liked it?
JM: Initially it was rather challenging. I mean it’s always challenging, but it was mystifying, because I didn’t learn about business in law school, or how to run a business, and I didn’t know how to run a business; and accounting was never my strong point. So there was a lot of learning on the job for me. Although I knew about construction from having worked in construction, I didn’t know about the business side of construction, and it seemed very complex and very challenging to learn at a rapid learning curve. But there was a lot to do; it was very exciting; I got to work with my father on a lot of his projects, flying to various places; that was fun. We did a lot of development work together; that was fun. It was nice to have him as a sounding board on all the issues that would come up on a variety of circumstances. So it was enjoyable to work together. Then my brother joined us too. It was a good situation.
JN: Your brother is how much younger?
JM: He is about six years younger than I am.
JN: It sounds like it was a good relationship you had with your father.
JM: Yes.
JN: Did you have any sense then or since about carrying on the family lineage, business-wise?
JM: I did when I came into work for my father, because he was too busy with other things, and he was unable to—he had said actually, “If you want to come in and run the business, you are welcome. I don’t know what I’m going to do; I may have to sell it; I’m not sure. It’s more than I’m able to deal with at the current time.” So, when I did begin, I did kind of feel like I was, not saving the family business, but keeping it going I suppose would be a good way to put it.
JN: And you took some pride, or there was some sense of responsibility.
JM: Yes.
JN: Again, focusing on St. Louis Park, the west side—you mentioned GIs, but can you say more about what kinds of families your father was hoping to attract?
JM: I don’t know that he was hoping to attract any specific kind of family. He was hoping to attract customers that could pay [laughs] for their home and their lot. That was the motivation for creating lots and building homes. I think that would probably be the best criteria: paying customers, really, all they were after.
JN: Did he do any kind of promotion?
JM: They did some advertising. They did some—I found some old ads they did in the newspaper on lots and so forth. A lot of it was in conjunction with Westwood Hills Golf Course, too. “Come live near the golf course,” that kind of thing. I think they had grander plans for the golf course lots at one point, but the way it worked out with the city didn’t quite turn out that way, and that’s often the way it happens.
JN: Do you know was there ever any of opposition from the community about this expansion in that part of the city?
JM: Yes, I recall there was a variety of opposition points at times towards some of the development ideas they had. And they worked though whatever it was, and we have what we have today.
JN: Do you know any specifics of what people were unhappy with?
JM: I know that before those car dealerships that are over on 394 now—and there are some office buildings there—there was a place called the Carriage House. It was a bowling alley and a little hotel, and they built that—that was on our land or their land—and so they had an enterprise going there. They also wanted to put up an apartment or condominium tower—a little ahead of its time—as part of that. And that received some opposition, and so that didn’t come to pass.
JN: Too high?
JM: Too high and too different of a use, close to residential people and that kind of thing. And that was part of, I think, what they were trying to do when they did Westmoreland Lane. Some of that, at that time.
JN: It’s been explained to me that after the war in the ‘50s that a lot of the men in the families worked downtown, and that there needed to be—they needed to get downtown easily. You mentioned 394 (which I grew up knowing as Highway 12); I’m sure Highway 12 existed back then in some form. Do you know to what extent the success of those development projects might have been linked to transportation infrastructure in place that allowed husbands to work downtown?
JM: It was convenient to downtown, at that time. Everybody’s “convenience” is relative, of course. At that time everybody thought it was the end of the world to go out to St. Louis Park, because it was farmland out there and it was a long way away from the center of Minneapolis. So it was perceived by some people to be a long drive. But it was, indeed, fairly close, and it took people maybe 20 minutes to come downtown in those days, and it was attractive from that standpoint to have new housing that was affordable within a short drive on Highway 12, which as you say was there, and that was the main route.
JN: Were there buses that ran to that area?
JM: Yes.
JN: Do you have any sense of how reliable the buses were?
JM: I don’t think the buses came right into the St. Louis Park areas where we were building, but they came up and down Highway 12. I think that was fairly reliable.
JN: With stops on 12?
JM: Yes.
JN: Is that still the case, do you know?
JM: Probably not, because it’s a freeway now; but they have more of a suburban transit busses that come though the freeway and pick people up at locations. Actually there are some Park and Ride locations on Highway 12, now that I think of it. There’s one on Louisiana, where there’s a parking lot on Louisiana and 394. So there are some stops, yes.
JN: A lot of Jewish families moved into this area over time. You mentioned that really what your father was concerned about was just having people move in who could pay. But what do you make of the fact that so many Jewish families moved in? Or what stories might you have heard from your father—from your parents—about that?
JM: I honestly don’t recall any stories as to why. I really don’t know that—they may have talked or had theories about why the migration was happening, but I don’t think I remember them talking about them at the dinner table or that it was ever an issue of any kind. I think they were happy to have the customers. I don’t remember any great theories were [laughs] bantered about at the time.
JN: Did your—I think for the sake of simplicity let me just call it the family business.
JM: Yes.
JN: Did your dad or people in the business work with outside realtors in actually selling homes?
JM: Yes.
JN: Were there relationships formed with realtors? Long-standing relationships?
JM: Yes, they had a company called David P. Jones Company that worked with them on marketing the lots—early on, in the ‘50s. That was headed up by a guy named Jim Cattanach. Actually my father built a house for him next to the first house they built on Westwood Hills Drive. He was a long-term family friend and did a lot of the initial marketing as a realty company.
JN: And this was independent of the family business?
JM: Yes. In later years we had our own sales staff on site—building and selling staff. In the early days I think it was more separate. But we always cooperated with realtors, who would bring clients and that kind of a thing. Other that David P. Jones I don’t know that we ever listed anything with an outside realty company. They may have done something like that, but I can’t recall what that might be.
JN: Were there other developers working around St. Louis Park during any of these same years?
JM: Yes, I think there was a developer named Adolph Fine who was doing work at that time. Orrin Thompson, of course, was starting his businesses around town. He was a contemporary.
JN: And he built in St. Louis Park?
JM: I don’t know how much he built in St. Louis Park, but I know he was more in Richfield—other areas maybe; but he was getting his start then too. It was funny, in later years we ended up building a house for Orrin Thompson and his wife [laughs] in one of our townhome communities. It was fun to get to know him. My father was a realtor also, so he was able to hire people to work in our on-site sales office when we had developments going in the area.
JN: Just looking around on the walls here, and from things that you’ve said, you’ve done a lot of development, different kinds. Since you came into it, describe some of the projects you’ve done.
JM: When I initially came into it, it was completing in the Westwood Hills development; it was one of the things I had to take on. There were a number of outstanding issues with everything from development issues to city issues to certain lots and legal descriptions and survey issues, lots left to be sold, homes still to be built—that kind of thing. A lot of it was completing the Westwood Hills developments. They were at their last stages, of course. And then my father had also started in the mid-‘60s a development called Amesbury, which is behind you on the wall there, actually. It was a 120-acre development out in the Deephaven-Shorewood area near Lake Minnetonka. He had started that first area, which is townhomes or attached doubles, and so forth. They were well received at that time. They were kind of an early beginning of that kind of product in our area. There wasn’t anything else like it.
JN: And that was what years?
JM: Early ‘70s is when they actually started first building. And that was the first phase of it there, in that picture. And where we see all the woods up above, that was land he owned also, and it was my duty to get that developed. The right half we developed into single-family lots; we developed some more townhomes in the woods up there too. Those projects were ‘80s and ‘90s kinds of projects.
JN: ‘80s and ‘90s, meaning the years?
JM: Yes. It kept us quite busy, out there doing that. We’ve developed other projects. The townhome project over on Cedar Lake Road in Minnetonka was one of our developments. We’ve got a large development in White Bear Lake right now—single-family homes. Worked on other commercial developments, other commercial projects. Just a variety of things.
JN: Commercial. You mentioned the Carriage House in St. Louis Park. Any other commercial projects that you did in St. Louis Park?
JM: I’m sure there were, but I’m kind of drawing a blank right now.
JN: So you’ve done a combination of commercial and residential?
JM: Yes.
JN: Have there been other sports centers?
JM: Yes.
JN: Since you’ve been involved?
JM: Yes.
JN: Have you developed an expertise in that as well?
JM: Nothing quite like my father had, that was his area.
JN: And you have projects out of state?
JM: Not right now. We have in the past, but not right now.
JN: How has the housing free-fall affected you?
JM: It’s really quieted our business down to very little activity right now. We haven’t been building many homes. We do a remodeling business, too; we’ve always had a remodeling business. That’s been steady, but it’s not been what it usually is. So we’ve been really reducing our staff, reducing our overhead, and reducing everything while we wait out this recession. So it’s affected our volume of work, for sure.
JN: Let me ask you a few questions about more general development in St. Louis Park, and again this is maybe not from your direct experience, but any light you can shed on this would be helpful. Going back to the ‘40s and ‘50s, were there other parts of St. Louis Park being developed that your family wasn’t involved with?
JM: Was involved with?
JN: Was not—actually either way.
JM: I don’t know the answer to that. In my experience, I was pretty much focused on the Westwood Hills and surrounding areas: Virginia Circle, Minneapolis Golf Club area, areas both north and south of Cedar Lake Road were, in my experience, what the reaches of the development had been. I know there were other developers and sometimes my father would sell groups of lots to other builders, too. We wouldn’t build all the homes necessarily. He’d maybe sell four, five, ten lots to a builder, too. So there were other builders that would come in and help build out the subdivisions.
JN: The same divisions that we’ve been talking about?
JM: Yes.
JN: The city of St. Louis Park incorporated in 1955. Do you have any sense of the relationship between that and the kind of burst in activity of development?
JM: I don’t know. I just would be guessing, because I don’t know for sure. I know that, at that time, my father had seriously thought of seceding from St. Louis Park and creating his own city of Westwood Hills. I don’t know how far along they got with that, but I know it was a serious consideration at the time. I’m sure that the city of St. Louis Park, being more formal and more aggressive, was helping with things like sewer and water, and those kinds of things that you need for developments; so I’m sure that spurred on some more development for the parts of the city that were undeveloped, yes.
JN: Why was your father considering seceding?
JM: I don’t know the answer to that. I can only guess that it might have been to avoid some of the controls and fees and other things he might have viewed as burdensome that the city of St. Louis Park would be imposing on people in that position that were developing land.
JN: So the point at which you come into it, what was it like for you to work with the city?
JM: My father had really completed all the St. Louis Park city stuff by the time I came along, for the most part. The battlegrounds had all been long ago left in the dust, and everything had been resolved. But I recall there were some contentious issues, that he spent many nights with his lawyer—who was one of my uncles—before the city council and trying to work things out. So it was not always easy. I remember that much
JN: Do you remember whether there were—again this may be even in your own time, once you got involved in the business—were there city council members who really wanted this project to keep going forward? Individuals who you felt you had the backing of? Or maybe your father felt he had the backing of as opposed to maybe others on the city council?
JM: That’s beyond my experience, really. I don’t know what his relationship was. I only can conjecture that he had some that were more sympathetic and others that might have been antagonistic. That would be fairly normal.
JN: I think if we look at the population figures today, St. Louis Park, which is about 45,000—that a lot more people moved into St. Louis Park than in Golden Valley or in Hopkins. I actually don’t know how the land areas compare; but my sense is—and we’ll look at that—but my sense is that St. Louis Park, as a city, welcomed residential development perhaps more than other close-in suburbs. Do you have any thoughts about that; about what the differences were among these suburbs that led to certain of them, like St. Louis Park, being more welcoming to development than others?
JM: I really don’t have a feeling for that. I know that Hopkins and Golden Valley were smaller geographically than St. Louis Park. I know that we did a little building in both Hopkins and St. Louis Park over the years, and in those years in particular. I don’t have a feeling for that.
JN: You personally were involved in projects in Hopkins?
JM: And Golden Valley, yes.
JN: And in Golden Valley. What years?
JM: Those would have been in my high school years, [laughs] actually, working on the job as a carpenter.
JN: So these are the ‘60s?
JM: Early ‘60s, mid-‘60s.
JN: Give an example of where in Golden Valley you worked.
JM: I remember homes on Lilac Drive North—Glenwood and Highway 100 area. I remember in tenth grade, one of my first jobs, I got dropped off at a house on Ardmore Lane, north of Glenwood, and it was a house being built for Doctor Zellickson and his wife. On a nice pond. The job superintendent was this big Swede, who was about six foot seven. He gave me a shovel and a wheelbarrow and told me to fill in the side of the house. It needed fill. They didn’t have Bobcats in those days, so my job was to fill up the wheelbarrow, eight hours a day, and take it over and dump it into the side of the house. That was my job for the first week. My mother told me when I came home from work, I barely got a bite of dinner in my mouth and I was sound asleep. I think that was my initiation as the boss’s kid, or something. At least I remember that house very well. So a lot of houses along the Glenwood Avenue corridor in Golden Valley. And then in Tyrol Hills, I think; South and North Tyrol—those areas. And then we built homes near Oak Ridge. Some of them I worked on streets over by Oak Ridge.
JN: And is that Hopkins?
JM: Yes. Some of those were lots that we had, and some of them were lots where people bought and had us build the house for them—that kind of thing.
JN: I’m jumping back a little bit. Once you came into the business, and were in the business a while, was a lot of what you did building individual homes?
JM: Yes.
JN: I’m just again looking at some of the photos on the wall; and that’s what it looks like.
JM: A lot of individual homes, a lot of remodeling, a lot of focus on land development for the projects that we had ongoing. And then some commercial activities as well. But our expertise in home building had kind of changed from, over the years, to be more of a high quality custom homebuilder. And I think a lot of the work we did in St. Louis Park over the years, the later years, helped gain that reputation for us as good quality custom builders. I know we built for a lot of the Jewish community there that had nice homes. I know from going to high school in St. Louis Park and hearing from my friends’ parents and my friends would say to me was that our reputation had been well built and well advertised by that community who were happy with the homes and happy with the results, so I think our reputation was enhanced by that.
JN: You actually had friends in high school who were living in homes in St. Louis Park that your family had built?
JM: Yes.
JN: Jewish friends and non-Jewish friends?
JM: Yes.
JN: So over time, maybe more our generation, marrying and having families, perhaps moving further out, is my sense of how things have kind of evolved . . .
JM: Yes.
JN: . . . as suburbs further out have developed. Do you have any sense of Jewish families migrating out further west?
JM: Yes.
JN: Describe that a little bit. What’s you sense of it?
JM: Well, from my observation point—when I grew up, I knew a lot of kids that lived over in the Fern Hill area; a lot of my friends lived over there, and they were Jewish families that had moved from North Minneapolis over to there, over by the west side of Cedar Lake and all around in there. And lot of them had been there for a while. Some over on . . . Minikahda Vista neighborhood. It seemed like a lot of neighborhoods where I had Jewish friends. A lot of them and their families would move to St. Louis Park—it seems like there was a double move: from North Minneapolis to there, and then some would come to St. Louis Park. Some would come direct from North Minneapolis. So I got to know a lot of them. It would seem like—I think I’m getting back to your question—that the next move would be to Minnetonka; a lot them moved to Minnetonka—the next generation—or even the same generation would move to Minnetonka. We’ve built homes for Jewish families who settled in St. Louis Park, like near the old Park Theater. They’d lived there for a long time, and they’ve grown up and all their kids are grown up. I mean, they’re probably my age or a little older. And they’ve wanted to build new homes, so we’ve built new homes for them out in the Minnetonka and Deephaven areas. They’ve kind of stayed put and skipped the St. Louis Park transfer; they had their house and stayed there. They missed out on that, or for whatever reason, didn’t build a new house until later.
JN: When you say stayed put and missed the St. Louis Park, you mean the Westwood Hills area?
JM: Yeah. A lot of the children of people that we’ve built for earlier in the ‘60s and ‘50s, we’ve actually done projects for them in the Minnetonka, Plymouth, Wayzata, western suburbs. It just kind of moved another notch out. I personally noticed that a lot of them would want to live near their friends that they grew up with, or may be building. There seemed to be some attachment or cohesiveness. Occasionally there would be some—I call them oddballs, because they would move way out somewhere; there was no one else, no other Jewish person nearby. In fact, it’s kind of a funny story. A friend of mine from high school named Stevie Wiesman died. He was a real character. He said to me one day—I ran into this guy. He said, “Where are you living?” I said. “Waconia.” He said, “Waconia?! There’s no Jews out there! What are you doing living in Waconia?” It kind of goes to what I was saying: that, I think, the people that kind of stayed together but not as close, they dispersed more—a little bit. At least, that was my experience.
It was nice for us to continue building homes for relatives of the Jewish families that we built for early on. We had several that we built homes for originally in Golden Valley back in the early ‘70s. One couple I am thinking of in particular; they moved into one of our townhome developments in Minnetonka in the late ‘80s early ‘90s, and then we’ve done projects for their children in the Minnetonka areas. So we’ve kind of seen the—if you want to call it a migration—we’ve seen it from that vantage point anyway, just watching the families that we’ve worked with over the years and how their children have moved around and settled.
JN: I’m assuming—tell me if I’m right—that as families, same generation or maybe the next generation, are moving further west in homes that you’ve built, that they’re also moving up the affluence ladder.
JM: Yes. I mean, generally, the houses in general, compared to what they used to be, are bigger, nicer, more expensive on average than what we were building in the ‘50s and ‘60s or ‘70s. For sure as a starting point the houses are nicer and bigger and better, and the affluence, I think, is better too. There have been a lot of successful people, and they have built nice products.
JN: Have you done any infill in St. Louis Park?
JM: Done some in West Minneapolis, but I’m trying to think if we’ve done any in St. Louis Park. I can’t think that we have, but I see it happening all the time.
JN: I noticed some when I was here last summer.
JM: Yeah, it’s happening more and more. People tearing down things and building a new house.
JN: Do you remember any other friends—Jewish friends—from high school days that maybe you have stayed in touch with?
JM: Sure.
JN: Like who for instance?
JM: Steve Polski, Market Bar-B-Que guy—he’s a good friend of mine. I talked yesterday on the phone to another good friend named Billy Liss, whose dad owned National Camera Exchange. He grew up on France Avenue across from France Field. He’s in Denver. There was kind of a gang of us: the Goodman twins—Andy and his brother Bill lived on France Avenue. We used to have poker games in their basement; that’s when I got introduced to the game of buck ‘em, or something—and so I learned how to lose money there. There were guys named Jeff Bassin and Stan Jaffe, I see them from time to time. I see a guy named Andy Steinfeldt often. He’s kind of our class president sort of guy who helps organize the reunions. There’s just a variety of friends that I actually do keep in touch with from those days and from the Jewish group, I suppose you’d call it.
One thing did come to mind when you were talking earlier, is I know back in those early days I think there were, as I recall—I don’t remember having personal experience; I remember reading about it more—was where some subdivisions and developers would have deed restrictions that wouldn’t allow sales of homes or land to people of different persuasions. Sometimes specifically they would mention Jewish people or black people or whatever. I don’t know if that had something to do with the direction of where people would go, because our developments in St. Louis Park were never—I mean my family was never that way; there were never any restrictions for anybody, so I don’t know how much restriction was elsewhere that actually, you know, limited choices. But I know it existed.
JN: I might have missed the first part of that. So how did you know it existed?
JM: I’ve read about it. I never had personal experience with it, but I know it was put into deed restrictions and things from earlier.
JN: Do you have any sense of what areas where that was done?
JM: I don’t. Like I said, I haven’t encountered any of it in my work, but I just know that it was something that existed in the not too long past. But it wasn’t part of my experience. I just know it was out there. I don’t know where.
JN: Maybe you haven’t really done any development in St. Louis Park for awhile, but do you have any impression of how St. Louis Park has developed—has continued to develop as a community through the ‘90s and the last twenty years or so?
JM: Well, my mother still has her house in St. Louis Park, so I am still a regular visitor to St. Louis Park, and I still have friends who live in St. Louis Park that, actually, went to high school with me in St. Louis Park. So I keep in touch to some degree with some of the local activities. I’ve been somewhat impressed lately with St. Louis Park from what I read and hear, that they’ve been proactive as a good city, and they’ve done some nice development things on Excelsior Boulevard, and their ice arena, and so forth. And now they are talking about a community center for the whole city—that would be nice; similar to what other cities have in the outlying suburbs, with an indoor pool and workout facilities, and all that. I’ve heard from the real estate community, too, that St. Louis Park is a desirable place to live. And the people that I talk to that we do remodeling projects for—on Westmoreland Lane for example—I talked to a woman there whose house we built there back in the ‘70s for her and her husband. We remodeled something for her last year. Her words were, “They just love St. Louis Park.” Their kids grew up in St. Louis Park, and they just, actually, love it. So I think there are a lot of positives there.
JN: Any specifics about what they loved?
JM: They liked the schools; they liked the experience their kids had; they liked the neighborhood; they liked the easy-to-get-places sort of feature about it.
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JN: From your own experience growing up in St. Louis Park, did you have a sense of there being parts of the city that were more affluent than others?
JM: Yes.
JN: And how did that break down—some examples.
JM: I think the Westmoreland Lane area was clearly developed into being a more affluent area in the city. I think Westwood Hills, parts of it were more affluent. I think some of the areas in the Minikahda Vista were more affluent. The Fern Hill area had some more affluent homes. Those are the ones that come to mind.
JN: And the less affluent areas?
JM: I think some of the older parts of the city, over by the railroad tracks and—what do they call it?— Skunk Hollow area. Or some of the older housing stock by Knollwood, north and south of Knollwood Shopping Center. In those areas perhaps. Some of the housing stock around Elliot Grade School.
JN: Which is where?
JM: On Cedar Lake Road and Louisiana South—east on Cedar Lake Road from Louisiana. Maybe a mile on the southern side. Older housing is kind of all around in there, working its way down towards Highway 100 and 394, probably. Both north and south of Elliot School, I think, were some of the maybe less affluent areas. But then some of the areas north and south of, I think it was Lennox School maybe, which was on Minnetonka Boulevard, east of Louisiana and Minnetonka Boulevard—some of those areas around in there.
JN: Are there any realtors, developers who go back to the ‘50s who you can think of that may still be around that would be good for us to talk with?
JM: There’s a guy named Sam Thorpe. His family had Thorpe Realty. They developed a lot of country club area in Edina. Sam’s family has been in the real estate business forever. And he’s around, still, I believe. They had a lot to do with the early days.
JN: Sam Thorpe is the one who is around now?
JM: Yes.
JN: OK. Anything else that maybe you thought of as we were talking about your involvement, your family’s involvement in development in St. Louis Park? And also maybe as it relates to Jewish families moving in?
JM: No, not really. I can’t think of anything other than I ended up with a more extensive Yiddish vocabulary than any of my other friends that I know. [Laughs] That was kind of funny, but I guess that’s what you get when you grow up next to people with different cultures and experiences.
JN: Well, that’s a good way to end this. Thank you so much.
JM: Sure.